Draft EEA Passport Rights (amendment, Etc., and Transitional Provisions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Ian Murray and Ged Killen

Wednesday 24th October 2018 General Committees

[Ian Murray]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin, to consider what is, in the Minister’s words, one of the most significant pieces of secondary legislation he has known.

[Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that given that, in the Minister’s own words, there is nothing of comparable significance to this statutory instrument, it is extraordinary that no Scottish National party Member is here to stand up for Scotland’s financial sector?

[Ian Murray]

I am delighted that we managed to contrive that intervention to put on the record that there is no one here from the third party of this House. Under the normal procedures of a Committee of such significance, it gets the right to respond, but has decided to pass up that opportunity. Given what the Minister said about the significance of the statutory instrument, there perhaps should be someone from that party here.

That does not take away from the fact that the statutory instrument says everything we need to know about the Government’s stance on Brexit. They are having to put through a statutory instrument to ensure any EEA firm that does business in the UK will be able to continue to do so after we leave the European Union in the event of no deal. There is utterly nothing from the Government about what will happen in the event of no deal. With the Prime Minister being stabbed in the back and hanging from the noose—in the words of Conservative Back Benchers—it looks increasingly unlikely by the day that we will end up with anything other than no deal or something close to it. What will happen to UK financial services firms that operate in the European Union?

I intervened on the Minister to ask whether he would expand on the fact that the Treasury is doing a significant amount of work. It should be commended for that work, but the Minister was questioned at least a dozen times in the House this week about the impact on jobs and this country’s GDP of a no deal scenario, or indeed a Chequers scenario or a Canada plus plus plus scenario. He fundamentally refused to answer that question.

In my earlier intervention, I asked whether the Minister could tell us the impact on jobs in the financial services sector in the event of no deal, which is what the statutory instrument is about, and he said he would answer in his summing up. I suspect that, by the time he gets to his summing up, he will not have a figure from the Treasury analysis, either because he does not have one, or because it is one that the Government do not want people to hear.

I hope the Chancellor comes to the Dispatch Box on Monday with a copy of the report from the Office for Budget Responsibility and lays out the impact of staying in the European Union, a no deal scenario, which is what the statutory instrument is about, a Chequers scenario, a Canada plus plus plus scenario, an hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) scenario, and the former Foreign Secretary’s scenario. For our financial services sector, it is merely a couple of reporting quarters away. I hope the Chancellor lays out the impact on jobs of leaving the European Union under all those plans, and everything in between, even if the Government give us just a range.

The Conservative party can fight internally all it wishes about who should have the keys to No. 10 and No. 11 and who should be doing the Brexit negotiations, but my constituency of Edinburgh South relies on financial services. We are talking about tens of thousands of jobs across Edinburgh and Scotland and the United Kingdom, billions of pounds in tax revenue to the Treasury every single year, and the underpinning of this country’s entire exporting system. Even if it were to come to pass, the Chequers plan, which looks as if it is just about as dead as the dodo, does not even mention the services sector. It is 80% of our economy, and it is not even mentioned in the Chequers plan.